


Scavenger Hunt

by somekindofseizure



Series: WTID Supplemental Reading [10]
Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: WTID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 14:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11511585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure
Summary: Anonymous asked:How much of her history has Stella shared with Scully?





	Scavenger Hunt

 

Getting to know Stella Gibson is a bit of a scavenger hunt - she picks up where Stella went to school here, how many siblings she has there.  Sometimes Scully gets frustrated and wants to sit Stella down in a hotel armchair and make her answer questions for three hours, take notes and turn a tape recorder on, but mostly she’s patient.  When she teases Stella about this, Stella says Scully is not exactly forthcoming about her past either, but Scully tells her that’s because most of it isn’t interesting, that anything Stella doesn’t know she could probably assume.  

“You’re probably right,” Stella will tell her, with a grin.  “Eighteen?”

“What?”

“When you lost your virginity.  High school prom?”

Scully clears her throat to summon some dignity, some air of mystery.

“A few weeks before.”  And then, because she never misses an opening, “What about you?”

But Stella’s eyes glaze over and her grin fades and Scully passes her a piece of chocolate and changes the subject. 

Scully may not know what kind of family Stella has, or what exactly her father died of, or how many demons exactly she battles with.  But she can read Stella’s temperature from across the room, hear the switch flip from silent-at-peace to silent-in-turmoil with music blaring and a bar full of people.  She knows Stella likes to be touched, but only by people she trusts, that she likes innocent-faced men and women with purpose, that she brushes her teeth in the shower and leaves cabinet doors slightly ajar sometimes, that she likes to dance but only when she asks, that she owns a red polka dot headband she uses to wash her face sometimes.  She knows she can call her for any reason, at any time, and not be judged or turned away, and that when Stella doesn’t answer a question, it means Scully will find it out eventually, out of nowhere, in some other empty space between two moments, when Stella’s finally ready to share it, and then Scully might wish she’d never asked it at all.  She knows, when that happens to put her hand lightly on Stella’s knee so she knows she’s been heard, but flirt until Stella forgets it again. She knows everything she needs to know.


End file.
